"One of the worst "red tides" to hit the Los Angeles County coastline in recent years has left boat cleaners without work, swimmers stranded on beaches and scads of fish dead.
Red tide, a naturally occurring ocean phenomenon, is caused by excessive growth of algae, which turns the water brownish-red about once a year. Since it showed up May 28, red tide has kept many beachgoers confined to the sand and made it impossible for divers who clean the underside of boats to see through the murky waters.
The overabundance of algae also contributed to the deaths of hundreds of fish in King Harbor Marina in Redondo Beach on Wednesday. The fish, starved of oxygen, floated to the surface and left a rancid smell in the air for days. "The smell was so bad that I had to stay inside," said Frankie Greco, 29, of Lomita, who spent Wednesday night in his boat docked at the marina. "I shut all the windows and doors and lit some candles."
The rapid growth of red algae in recent weeks has caused ocean bacteria, which feed on the tiny plants as they die, to multiply exponentially. As the bacteria use up limited supplies of oxygen in shallow waters such as King Harbor Marina's, many smaller fish such as garibaldi and red sea bass suffocate. "If you're a fish living in the harbor, you're out of luck," said Giancarlo Cetrulo, director of the Los Angeles Conservation Corps' S.E.A. Lab in Redondo Beach. Although the dead fish -- easy prey for seagulls and crabs -- were all eaten by Friday, the red tide might not clear for weeks."
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http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/articles/1602447.html
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